Tuesday, March 2, 2010

It's been a while...

Greetings my fellow "Imagination" sovereigns and everyone else as well. I appologize for my and Ludwig's extended absence from this blog. It has been a while since I have been able to post here. They say that 'life' is what happens while you're making other plans and life has happened in abundance. What with the economic downturn, my job here in California has been very much an on again, off again affair. I spent last summer working on the Alaska Railroad.Many of the TMP'ers here might be familiar with Alxbates of "Tales from work" fame. I was able to drop in on him at his bar in Fairbanks while I was up North. After getting back in September and chasing my seniority with Union Pacific Railroad from one end of the State of California to the other, there were all manner of family medical issues to deal with, so my hobby has of neccessity taken a back seat.

Anyways enough about all of that...

I am back and have much painting to do. I have been slowly acquiring Foundry 28mm Prussians for the Ost-Pommern Army. I have about 2/3 of the infantry and the Guard du Corps at 20:1 sitting in boxes under my desk and was ready to dive into painting. Then like most gamers I know, I was distracted by the next big thing, literally.Trident Miniatures, the brainchild of Doug Carroccio of the Miniatures Service Center and sculptor Sean Judd have trotted out the Hessians for their 40mm American War of Independence range. http://www.miniatureservicecenter.com/ I had been keeping in touch with Doug for some time and making a few purchases here and there from his expanding range. I had pestered him often enough about the Hessians and then one day they arrived. Nigel Billington of 18th Century Press fame had often inspired me with his 40mm S&S Prussians and I sent him a sample of the range. His brush is far better than mine and it is his work in the picture above. http://nigbilpainter.blogspot.com/2009/11/40mm-from-trident.html

Anyways, I had been sitting on my Christmas money from the wife until now... I am staring at a mountain of 40mm Hessian/Prussian musketeers and I'm wondering what to do with them. Should I go with 1:10 individually based for BAR or 1:20 multiple based on 60mm*60mm stands? Should I go Hessian and Brunswicker for the AWI or Prussian for the SYW? I even had a thought to game in 1:5 with a homebrew ruleset of mine I call der Kleine Krieg. The idea of a 120 figure battalion in 40mm with all five flags (1 leibfahne and 4 regimentsfahne) flying is almost too much to resist. Any suggestions would be welcome.

6 comments:

Having been tempted by 40mm as well, I decided to used them for 1:10 (or 1:20) skirmish or small battles - in the context of a border war with one of my imagi-nation's smaller neighbours; leaving my 28mm figs for engagements of 3 batallions plus a side.

Welcome back!I stick to a single scale myself, but the idea of using the 40mm figures for smaller actions seems a sound one. If you base them singly you can always use movement trays for moving groups.

In addition to moving trays, there's the old WRG solution of having bases, but at least one base in each unit is broken down into fractions. For instance, when using 25+ mm figures for Koenig Krieg, (12 figs = battalion) I have two bases with four figures, one for two figures, and two for single figures. :)\A

Do these 40mm really HAVE to be 'historical'? The bigger the battalion, the more 'realistic' -and thus satisfying- it looks, in any case.

For large battles I found long ago (under WRG 6th) that having all the minis glued to collective bases (was 4 / unit for Ancients; for the Lace Wars I'd go for 8 / unit of 48 foot or 32 horse) and recording the 'casualties' makes for faster play: it's so quicker -and less boring- to tick on a 'graduated' line on a cross-ruled sheet and to have only 4 'elements' to move even for a 64figs pike phalanx!